The increasing recognition of indigenous perspectives regarding religious practices such as shamanism and spirit possession offers a welcome respite from the excesses of scientific skepticism. Anthropologists may, however, become dogmatic in the opposite direction through accepting and even promoting at face value the officially presented "emic" view. At times, ritual practitioners themselves...
An argument is made for the unthreading of two separate, if commonly intertwined, elements of spirit possession prac tices. The term "trance-possession" is frequently employed to designate either of these concepts, implying that trance and possession are essentially synonymous in nature. Yet the psychophysiologically altered states of consciousness known as trance constitute something...
Participants in Northern Brazilian Tambor de Mina dance and spirit possession rituals demonstrate three principal discourses concerning memory and states of consciousness during possession. Most dancers claim, as "unconscious" mediums, to remember essentially nothing of their trance experiences. Many, however, speak of "faked" or incomplete forms of possession. In fact, my research eventually...